Portraits

On Thursday, May 9th we celebrated the Good Lord Jesus’ Ascension back to heaven. And to do so, we had a concert with a couple of Angel voices! Jennifer Jade Kerr and Kelti Malone blessed our congregation in Oxbow with a sweet concert. They are AMAZINGLY talented singer songwriter types. I highly recommend you check ‘em out and buy all their records. :D As if that wasn’t good enough, we sweetened the whole deal and had an ice cream buffet afterwards. We had a really great turn out with lots of community members attending.

The the girls were kind enough to indulge my photo addiction and do some portraits with the D800. Musicians deserve moody lighting, at least, I think they do. :cool: I wanted to try some anyways so here’s what I came up with.

Jennifer Jade Kerr

For Jennifer, I envisioned her glorious red hair and decided that warm tones would be the ticket. I wanted to go with short lighting too for the utmost of flattery. Then I had the idea to put some candles in the bokeh to further play off the red/warm feel of the overall image. I also wanted a bit of guitar in the image, but not to let it dominate the scene. I was pleased because it turned out how I envisioned it. :)

Kelti Malone

Kelti has a way cool violin! I knew that I wanted to do some edgy stuff with it. So we did a pretty dramatic portrait of Kelti with some way cool profile lighting. And then, we decided to just shoot the violin – because it’s so darn cool! :cool:

Back in April we had the big Dance Recital. It was great because my daughter was in it. :) And by that, I mean, I loved it even more because my daughter was in it. Miss Halynne did a totally rock star job with the kids, especially the littlest ones. It was neat to see all the different levels of experience. I know my daughter benefitted from seeing the older girls doing their hip hop moves as an encouragement to see what happens later in life with practice. :D I did the group photos the day before at the dress rehearsal and also did a quick session setup for anyone who wanted formals done. It was fast paced maniacal gong show! But it was loads o’ fun and everybody looked super cute. :cool:

Every Lent I grow a beard. It started out as a way to be reminded to pray when it started itching. Now it’s just a long standing tradition that is more of a joke than anything. But, it’s gone again for another year! Here chronicles the carnage!

The Bearded Truth

Contemplate

Words can’t express it…

Beard Buster

The Beard of 2013

Uncle Tim

You’re looking at a legend

The Agent

Friendly Chops

You’ll be wearing this next year

Rico Suave???

Drum Roll….

Clean Cut White Boy!

And, if you can’t get enough, watch this YouTube Video. *One profanity used towards the end and for that I apologize.

Every year our parish holds a “Mission Festival” where we bring in a speaker to talk about the important mission work he or she or they have been doing. This year, we were pleased to have Rev. DJ Kim join us in Oxbow. He’s an ordained Lutheran pastor who is serving as a street minister and also works as a chaplain with the Regina Police force. He shared some amazing stories – some of them very graphic – about what a police chaplain does. He helps serve members of the police force, especially people struggling with PTSD, in addition to helping victims of crime on the path to healing and restoration. Rev. Kim also crosses the great divide in that he does outreach to the people who have committed the heinous crimes too. He truly has an amazing vocation in that he covers the whole spectrum of sin and hurt from the culprits to the victims to the people who nobly have to deal with it day in and day out. Growing up in Korea, Rev. Kim had a very difficult childhood. He comes from a broken home, was raised in foster homes and the street. He’s been both a leader of gangs as well as a mixed martial arts champion. In short, he can relate to people on both sides of the law. He’s been through the very depths of hell and as such, he can relate to people who are currently living there now and help them on the path out. He’s an amazing individual and we are blessed to have him as part of our church. He’s the first to tell you that the only thing that can turn a troubled life around is the grace of God. “Look at me,” he says, “I’m the living proof!” :cool:

It’s a photo shoot I won’t soon forget! Leighton contacted me about taking some photos of him and his girlfriend Brandy. Simple and straightforward enough. But then, there was a catch. A wonderful catch indeed. Turns out that at the very end of the shoot, he popped the question! And the camera caught the whole thing!! :cool: It was tremendous and I was excited to be part of the adventure. Catching real emotion and moments with a camera is an unbelievable experience. :) And . . . she said “yes.” :D

Eve of Destruction 2! This time, it’s not Eve of Destruction 1! :cool: The event is pure awesome! Last year it was a combine smash up derby, this year, a truck and trailer figure 8 crash up! hehhhehe… But not only is there the main event, there is also lots of other amazing performances from exploding cars to MX stunt dudes to car flips to truck pulls. But I wasn’t there for any of it. My job was to take some pictures of the Lord of the Speedway, Byron Fichter. He’s an Estevan area photographer who specializes in landscapes and motor sports. His work at the Estevan Motor Speedway is exceedingly well known and he knows his craft. Be sure to check out his images at his website ByronFichter.com. I had fun following Byron around and taking some shots of him in action.For a guy who is known for his work at the track, it’s nice to actually get some shots of him at the track.:cool: People were saying to him “Are you the guy from the track?” Now they will see the photos and know. It was lots of fun shooting Byron and being able to nab a few shots of the event. The MX bikes were 80 feet in the air when doing their stunts! Unreal! I’m glad I was on the ground with a camera. :)

This post could be called D800 Snugs part 2. I took full advantage of Teresa’s camera while she was here. Ironically, I have been wanting to get a macro shot of a peacock feather for a long, long time. However, since the D800 came out, I’ve been waiting to use it to capitalize on the megapixels and get blown away by the sheer awesomeness of the detail. It didn’t disappoint. The 105mm micro lens is unreal sharp. I used it on the feather but also for the ad hoc portrait of Talitha . . . who’s last name is Peacock. Go figure. Serendipity? :cool: Talitha is a super rad girl and, she’s a harpist which makes me cool and couth by association. Check out her music here: http://peacocksmusic.com. I was blown away by the portrait. Goes without saying that Talitha is beautiful, but the quality of the file is unlike anything I’ve ever seen. The D800 really brings it! :cool: The feather image is going huge on my wall. I’ll see how 36×48 looks! :)

A friend of ours was on her way through the hood and was able to stop by for a couple days visit. It was super fun to have Teresa and her (and our new) friend Talitha stop by. We haven’t hung out for many moons as Teresa and her husband have been living in New Zealand for a couple of years. Great to have them back in Canada! And, it was a grand occasion for me additionally because I got to play with the Nikon D800! Teresa is an awesome photographer now based out of Calgary, AB. Check her out at http://teresarehmann.com. We traded some photography as she needed some updated portraits and we needed a family photo that has all of us in it! bwahahhaah… :cool: And, I got to test the D800 extensively. And test I did, plugging all my lenses onto it and running it through it’s paces. I know the sensor is good. But I didn’t know it was THAT good. It is unbelievable. I’m really not exaggerating here. The image quality, the sharpness, the detail, the contrast, the colour, it’s nearly beyond description. And for what I do, portraits, landscapes and macro stuff, it’s a match made in heaven. HOWEVER. And it’s a big however, the files are so huge that they are unruly. We shot everything in RAW pretty much and editing them on my 3.06 iMac with 8 GB of RAM was painful. Slow. Excruciatingly so – packed in the whole Mac and needed a reset once. But it’s worth it! The images are unbelievable, especially with my 105mm macro lens. “Wicked sharp” has a whole new meaning to me! There’s just sooo much detail and nothing hides from that sensor. Probably need a new computer though . . . :D

Laney has a heart of gold! And that sweetness of her personality flows out of her and looks tremendous on camera. :cool: This shoot was really enhanced because of that. I really liked being able to do some fiddle shots of Laney too. The location was really fitting for a western theme and added a lot to how the images worked over all. We setup in a big shed and the floor was perfectly full of fine dust that I knew would give some sweet texture to the shot – especially when you have people run through it and really stir it up! :D Light and dust/dirt/smoke/fog go together like peanut butter & chocolate!

And, last but not least was the barn. Again, some amazing textures in there. When you mix the sweetness of Laney and the roughness of the location, some cool lighting, it makes for some really dramatic portraits. :)

Went out last night for an evening shoot with the Sawatsky family. We had perfect weather with glorious warm golden light – until the last 2 minutes of the shoot when the wind came up out of nowhere, blew over my c-stand (sandbagged!) and carried my light setup a quarter mile! bwahahahah.. I wish I would have taken pictures of my shoot-thru umbrella carrying my flash bracket across the beach. It was hilarious. Fortunately, nothing was damaged and, we got the shot after all! :D

Not enough can be said about golden light, that mystical time of the day right before sunrise and right before sunset. The light is super soft and warm. It’s pure awesome. Plus, scheduling the shoot at that time allows for the sunset to get richer and richer as time goes on. Most of the photos from this shoot were shot using ambient light as the key, supplemented with a CTO flash to help add warmth and a kicker. It’s really soft subtle light which works nice for the kids. They did an AWESOME job as photo candidates. We worked quickly and nabbed a nice mix of shots.